So what was all the fuss about? After all Michael O’Leary’s huffing and puffing in recent weeks, in the end Ryanair kept their guidance for full year profits at €1.425bn.
The airline predicts 117m passengers in 2016, which means that at current trends it will overtake the Lufthansa group as Europe’s largest airline and emerge as the fifth largest airline in the world by year end.
Ryanair is already the single largest airline brand in Europe, having overtaken 
Lufthansa (the airline, as opposed to the group) in 2008, BA in 2006 and Air France in 2004.
So far in 2016, Ryanair have carried 77.28m passengers as against 73.2m for the Lufthansa group (to end August), 67.89m for the IAG group of Aer Lingus, BA, Iberia and Vuelling, 62.32m for Air France/KLM, 50.13m for Easyjet, 42.27m for Turkish, 19.69m for the Aeroflot group (to June), 15.86m for the SAS group (to July), 19.62m for Air Berlin, and 19.34 for Norwegian with Wizz Air (14.95m) up to 11th place.
It is all a far cry from the 15-seater Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante EI-BPI (pictured) which took off from Waterford to Gatwick airport in 1985.
By our reckoning 923 airlines have failed in Europe since then.
Meanwhile the airline put in place by Tony Ryan, Christy Ryan and (lest we forget) Liam Lonergan has weathered every storm. Watch here Travel Extra Eoghan Corry reacting to the news. Watch here Michael O’Leary talking about possibly reducing guidance form the anticipated €1.4bn profit.
